Chingona Revolution is hosted by Erika Cruz, a rebel who left a 6-figure tech job to pursue her own unconventional path to success by following her passion that led to her purpose. Every week, Erika will bring out of you that BADASS LATINA through her experiences to overcome self-doubt and family expectations and lead with COURAGE.
Your posts are good, but not great for this new algorithm. People are more interested in using social media as a search engine than ever before, so the algorithm is more interest-based than it used to be. That means that you want to start creating “selfless content” instead of “selfish content” and posting that on your personal brand pages.
So what the heck does any of that even mean??? It means that when you tap into people’s interests, you will attract the right people to your brand. When you attract the right people to your brand, you can start making money online and attracting the opportunities that will help you manifest your dream life. It’s simple!
In this week’s episode, we’re talking about how building a personal brand is the fastest way to manifest your dream life. Your personal brand is in your control. You get to show up how you want and attract the people and opportunities that fit into your dream life. Tune in to this week’s episode to learn how to use the interest-based algorithm and your personal brand to manifest your dream life.
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Erika: [00:00:00] So if you start showing up with intention and you are tapping into people’s interests, you will attract the right people. Even if nobody in your real life supports you or knows what you’re doing or really understands, you will find strangers on the internet who do, who are in, in alignment with that place in your life that you are also in.
So your personal brand is not just. A strategy. It’s literally your biggest manifestation tool.
Erika: Hello. Hello. Welcome back to [00:01:00] this week’s episode of Chingona Revolution Podcast. If you want to manifest your dream life, whether that is more money, more freedom, more opportunities. The fastest way to do this in 2026 is not through journaling more or not through only journaling more. It’s not through hoping harder.
It’s not through applying to a bunch of different jobs. It is building a personal brand because your personal brand is not just content. It is a portal that will open up. Doors, opportunities, connections, and so much more. So here’s the thing. Maybe you’re thinking, I want more freedom, right? I want more money.
But what you actually want is freedom over your time. You want control over how you spend your time. You don’t wanna have to ask for paid time off. You want to be able to do what you want with your life. I think especially after the [00:02:00] pandemic. It kind of shook up our values in the workplace a little bit more, where we started valuing not just money, but also freedom.
You don’t want your income to solely rely on your job, especially with the amount of layoffs that are happening and the amount of changes that are happening with. No job is secure right now. I have so many clients in the tech industry that have been laid off because of these big shifts that are going on.
You want to do work that feels aligned and that feels really meaningful, and you want opportunities that you didn’t even know existed. You wanna meet people who are your people? You want to expand your life, and maybe you’ve got amazing friends around you, but maybe you’ve outgrown each other a little, right?
Maybe you’ve just taken kind of different paths and you want an aligned community around you who’s going to support you and help you get to your goals, and guess what? Your personal brand gives you all of that, [00:03:00] and to really drive this home. I have a few examples for you all. And the first first one is Tabitha Brown.
Tabitha Brown started creating content on TikTok in 2020, around the same time that I started creating content. But the thing is that Tabitha Brown creates vegan recipes, vegan soulful recipes, but when she started posting content, it wasn’t just posting content, she really started building her brand. So what does that look like?
That looked like not just posting her vegan recipes. Yes, she did that. But she also embedded storytelling. She also embedded her faith, her peace, her joy, all aspects of her, and she really was not just this recipe developer. She brought her full self, and that is exactly what building a personal brand is.
Now, she has products in Target TV shows as well as books.
Another example of an [00:04:00] individual who. Had her life completely changed because of her personal brand is Huda Kaan. I might be mispronouncing her name. I personally have some of her products. I was literally just using the Huda powder, the finishing powder on for makeup. So Huda actually started off creating tutorials and opinions like creating makeup tutorials as well as doing product reviews and her, her natural opinion.
now she runs a global beauty empire. You go into Sephora and Huda Beauty is one of those top makeup brands. I mean, it’s all over my feed. I didn’t even know who she was, but her personal brand allowed her to build this. Global Beauty Empire, but I don’t think the the brand would be as successful if it wasn’t for her.
Another good example around makeup is Rare beauty, right? The reason rare Beauty has done so well is because Selena Gomez’s personal brand is also attached [00:05:00] to it, and she’ll create videos of her using the product. But the thing is that when Huda started, I guarantee you she had no idea she was going to end up running a global beauty empire.
She was literally just showing up as herself, creating content, creating these tutorials, doing reviews and things like that. And then we’ve got Catherine Zina, who is the founder of Manifestation. Babe, you may follow Manifestation Babe Online. And the thing about Catherine is that she didn’t start off as this person who was a master manifester or anything like that.
She actually started off in a lot of debt, a lot of fear, a lot of self-doubt, and she really started stuck and she started searching and sharing her journey. And through that she has built this amazing brand, but not just a brand. She has built a whole movement. And now she sells courses. She’s a coach.
She has one of the top podcasts. But that is a perfect example of how You don’t have to be an expert yet in order to get started. [00:06:00] It’s about sharing your journey. And then myself, right? I’m a great example as well. In 2020, I started posting content and it was just a creative outlet for me.
And what happened was I started to find a lot more meaning in my life. I was still working the tech job I didn’t wanna be at, but by creating content and showing up and building my personal brand, I was creating this impact and connection with people that I had never felt before. And it became so. Fun before you start creating content.
It is like the scariest thing, but once you get started and you start to find your people, it’s addicting and in the best way because you are creatively expressing, you are connecting with people, and I think the issue with social media is when people are spending all of their time consuming rather than creating, that’s where it’s dangerous, but creating is a beautiful thing.
And it can, again, it’s a portal. It can open up so many doors and opportunities for you. So for me, I started creating content and from there I was like, okay, this [00:07:00] content is really resonating with people. What if I host these free workshops? I started hosting free workshops, and that is when people started asking if I could coach them.
And that’s how my coaching business began. And since then, I have had wild opportunities like landing on the front page of the New York Times, interviewing celebrities like Luis Fci. Making more money than I have in the tech industry, as well as running my own business that is not just creating impact, but it’s also allowing me to have the time and financial freedom that I’ve always looked for.
And even though it’s not always perfect, it is so much better than working an unfulfilling job that I’ve outgrown. And I could have never even imagined this life if it wasn’t for this. Life wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for my personal brand. But I couldn’t have even put this life on my vision board because it was more than I could have even imagined.
I didn’t even think that this was possible for me. So. [00:08:00] Why have you not been successful with creating your personal brand? Well, one, maybe you just haven’t shown up at all, but let’s say that you have been showing up. I wanna make sure that this is not just theoretical and I’m just like, oh, here’s what’s possible.
Like, let’s actually get into some strategies. I have been coaching on this inside of my group, courage Driven Latina, because we just, closed enrollment and had all these amazing women join us and I’ve been doing a lot of trainings and I’ve been getting a lot of feedback, so I figured I would bring a little taste of that here to the podcast.
So if you have started creating content, but it’s not turning into sales or brand deals or connections, and the content is just kind of flopping in your opinion, that’s because most of you who are creating content are creating personal content. Personal content is for friends, it’s for family. And it might be for validation, right?
But it’s not personal branding content, and there is a difference. And let me tell you the difference [00:09:00] between personal content and personal branding content.
Personal content is random updates, no clear message. It’s a kind of selfish content, and what I mean is the content is simply about you and an update about you, which worked when the algorithm was focused on showing you your friend’s content, but the algorithm has shifted. It has shifted from being a social media algorithm to an interest based algorithm.
What that means is when you open your phone, whether that’s Instagram or TikTok, or LinkedIn, you won’t only see people that you already follow. You’ll see content based on what you are interested in. How does it know what you’re interested in, what you’re liking, what you’re watching more of, what you are sharing with people.
I have a cousin who’s pregnant right now with twins, so the algorithm knows that. [00:10:00] Why? Because that is what she’s been engaging with. She’s watching those videos to the end. She’s maybe saving those videos, maybe sending those videos to her partner. And she said, when we were on the phone the other day, she said, I wasn’t liking anything because I didn’t wanna give it away in case people saw what I liked.
But she was sharing and she was saving, and the algorithm knew that. So even though the rest of us didn’t know, the algorithm knew what she was interested in. So personal content is. I am gonna give you some examples. Again, it’s a little bit more selfish. So an example of that would be a photo of your food.
That would be personal content, right? Unless somebody knows you and there’s just a random photo of your food, nobody else really cares about that. I mean, your mom might care, maybe your siblings might care, or your friend like, oh, that looks good. When are we going to go eat there? But why would somebody else care about that?
They probably wouldn’t. So. Personal content is a photo of your food or what I ate today if you just said, oh, here’s what I ate today. [00:11:00] But an example of personal branding content for that same piece of content would be what I eat in a day as a 29-year-old vegetarian to ensure I eat 100 grams of protein.
That is still about you, but it’s freaking valuable. Right. It’s a little bit more selfless. You’re sharing value in that, and that is personal branding content. So personal branding has a clear perspective. It speaks to a specific person. It builds around your story and your lessons, and it creates connections as well as opportunities.
So let me take you all through two more examples of the difference between personal content and personal branding content, and we’ll talk a little bit more about this algorithm shift and then we’ll wrap it up because I want this to be a short and sweet episode. A piece of personal branding content would look something like Five things that are worth the hype in Cancun, Mexico, or how I’d spend four days [00:12:00] in Rome as a travel, as a luxury travel advisor. Do you see how different those are? Or maybe a photo of your kid is an example of personal content, but personal branding content would be how I romanticize motherhood without losing myself in it.
Do you see the difference? And one of ’em is a little bit selfish, it’s just about you. The other one is still using your story, but it’s using your story to connect with people. And to share lessons with them, it’s, you’re answering the question what’s in it for them? It’s really, well, what’s in it for them is that you’re giving them value and you are supporting them.
And whenever you are giving people value, then they will share the content. Shareable content is interest-based content, right? So that’s the content that tends to perform the best. So as I mentioned, social media used to be this like friend based. Kind of algorithm and now it’s really interest-based. So if you start showing up with intention and [00:13:00] you are tapping into people’s interests, you will attract the right people.
Even if nobody in your real life supports you or knows what you’re doing or really understands, you will find strangers on the internet who do, who are in, in alignment with that place in your life that you are also in. So your personal brand is not just a strategy, it’s literally your biggest manifestation tool.
When you build a personal brand, you manifest the life that you want. And because you are in control of your personal brand, you’re also in control of manifesting your dream life.
You decide who you are, you get to decide what you share publicly and what you don’t. You get to attract the right people and opportunities will come your way. And that is how manifestation works. So if I were you and I was going to start today, I would pick one platform.
I would post three times a week. I would share your [00:14:00] story and lessons and. Start there, and if you are like, wait, Erica, I really want to do this, then I invite you to join me in my personal branding intensive. I have four spots for my personal branding intensive. I left, I had already sold out, but then I was opening enrollment for my program.
But maybe you missed the deadline for my program, or maybe the program wasn’t the best fit for you. For example, I had somebody who was a guy who wanted to work with me, so the personal branding intensive was perfect. And then I had somebody else who was like, wait, no, I really want personalized attention here.
So if you would like my support with clarifying your messaging. Turning your content from personal content to personal branding content, and if you wanna leave with a handful of content ideas ready to go, so you can just create them, then the personal branding intensive is perfect for you. And again, it was already sold out, but I’m opening for spots for this intensive.
So this is for the person who doesn’t wanna keep [00:15:00] overthinking, wants clarity fast, and wants to work with me directly. So you can find more information about that down below in the link. And I think that’s all y’all. If you found this podcast episode helpful, let me know with a dm or if you wanna take a screenshot and share it to your socials or share it with a friend, because when you are building a personal brand alongside a friend, that accountability is the best. Okay, y’all have a great rest of your day and I will see you all next week. [00:16:00]